This video features President Bill Clinton's 2001 address at Michigan State University, where he outlined his administration's economic achievements including reducing the federal deficit from $290 billion to a $240 billion surplus, achieving the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, and implementing policies that benefited working families through tax credits, minimum wage increases, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Clinton emphasized that successful governance requires balancing economic growth with environmental protection, investing in education, and maintaining unity across racial and religious lines, arguing that America's future depends on treating every endeavor as a team sport where collective effort leads to shared prosperity.
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President Clinton at MSU in East Lansing, MI (2001)Added:
Heat.
Heat.
the basketball crowd. You guys Heat. Heat.
Welcome students, faculty, staff, and friends at Michigan State University.
>> Mr. President, you can see, hear, and feel how pleased we are to have you back on campus again. And thank you.
>> Let me make a couple important introductions.
Michigan Senior US Senator Carl Lean, we thank you.
Senator Leven is chair of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate was so very important. Many of you don't know this. A year ago when we were when we needed to get some additional vaccines for the menis vaccine effort, needed to get them overnight. Senator, we thank you for doing that. It just wouldn't have happened without you.
Let me recognize members of the MSU board of trustees that are here today.
Trustees Bob Weiss, Joel Ferguson, Dolores Cook, Dorothy Gonzalez, David Portius. Please stand and we thank you.
Also present is our MSU graduate, Governor Jim Blanchard, who was instrumental in bringing President Clinton here.
Jim was Jim was instrumental in bringing President Clinton here for our commencement address in 1995. And we thank you, Governor.
We appreciate the presence of so many other elected officials and distinguished guests.
I now want to bring out our outstanding basketball coach, Tom Isizo, our team.
Heat up here.
Heat. Heat.
Heat.
Heat.
M Mr. President, Mr. President, we understand the schedule didn't quite work to have the team at the White House and we appreciate the White House coming here today.
Heat.
Heat.
Now, let me introduce US Senator Debbie Stabinoff.
Congressman, Congresswoman representing the district here in this middle Michigan area, an MSU graduate. and now a US senator.
Debbie, good afternoon.
Go States. All right.
It is so wonderful to see all of you today and I'm so proud to be once again welcoming our president, the outstanding president, Bill Clinton.
He's done so much.
>> You know, if you'll remember, Mr. President, I gave you a t-shirt right before the final four, and I know you said at that time that you were a fan of Michigan State, and it's very special, very special that you're back with us today.
You know, this is my first opportunity to say thank you and to come before you as Michigan's junior senator serving with the outstanding senior senator Carl Lean.
And I just want to say as I introduce a very special gentleman who will introduce the president that there's not a person sitting here today or standing here today that has not been positively impacted by this president in his administration.
There is no one here.
Whether it's the costs of college or child's health care or jobs or protecting our environment or all of the other things that allow us as families to benefit from this great country. Our president has been there day after day fighting for us. And today is our opportunity to say thank you, Mr. President, for all you have done.
It is my great pleasure to introduce a gentleman that will now be introducing the president. Ed Foy is of Chestning, Michigan. He met the president in 1992, a campaign rally in Flint. He now has a button on that comes from that campaign.
And when then Governor Clinton spoke about the need to strengthen the economy, pay down the deficit, and do more for working families, which is exactly what he has done for eight years. As the assistant director of the United Auto Workers Union Region 1C, Mr. Foy works on behalf of approximately 50,000 Michigan workers to ensure that issues affecting working people are addressed. As a local labor leader in Michigan, Ed has seen how the lives of so many Michigan citizens and other Americans has have improved over the last eight years. And I'm very pleased.
Please give a warm Spartan welcome to Mr. Ed Foy.
>> Thank you very much.
Isn't it great to be here in Spartan land >> and the state of Michigan? The United States of America is the greatest country in the world. And there are good reasons for that. History shows that we have been strong and unified when it counted when our top leader had the ability to make the appropriate decisions.
In 1992, as Debbie's mentioned, I met then with Governor Bill Clinton, who was in Michigan discussed the economy and the needs of working families. He appeared to have the qualities necessary to lead and strengthen our country, and we were inspired to work hard on his behalf. We were not disappointed.
Eight years ago, we were a nation that had a trillion dollar deficit.
and more. And getting worse, the economy was in real trouble. Working people were looking for a friend in the White House.
When the newly elected president took office in January of 1993, it became evident that we had a leader who was willing to take on the major challenges.
With this plan, the economy started to turn around and the deficit began to decline.
A number of issues were introduced and supported by the president, including the family medical act, legislation to pro provide tax credits for college tuition.
He realized the importance of higher education, understood the burden that providing for it places on the workingclass families. retired workers began to be properly represented in the White House and other ideas were instituted that would help America grow.
Yes, our newly elected president was up to all the challenges that we threw at him. We are fortunate to have had his leadership. He is a man of compassion and vision, working tirelessly to improve the quality of life for all Americans.
We in Michigan know why we saw a turnaround in our state. Why our state has grown and become healthier. It was not luck.
It was for someone we had that was looking out for us. Someone that had a plan that worked. On behalf of the residents of state of Michigan, I would like to thank you, President Bill Clinton, for this visit. I know the children of our country have a brighter tomorrow because of your decisions over the past eight years.
And yes, the people of Michigan have a bright future because of you. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you President William Jefferson Clinton, a man who is truly for the people, for the people. Please welcome our friend, leader, President Bill Clinton.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Let me uh say first of all how delighted I am to be here, to be back at Michigan State. I have uh I thank uh President McFerson and the board of trustees for letting me come back. I think if I were to come back one more time as president, I've been here so many times, I'd owe partial tuition at least.
I always love coming here and I'm delighted to be here. I also want to thank Ed Foy for coming out to meet me in 1992 and sticking with me all the way to the end. He he gave a great speech and he was a great representative of the working people of Michigan and the United States and I thank him.
I want to thank Senator Carl Levan for being my friend and being a friend of the people of Michigan.
There is no member of the United States Senate today who is more respected than Carl Lean and you should be very proud of him.
Now, your new senator, Debbie Stabinau, got her start she got her start in politics when she was still a student and was elected county commissioner. So, some of the rest of you might get a few ideas from that.
I am delighted to uh welcome her to the Senate. I'm I'm so pleased she was elected before I left office and she's in a a class of senators which includes some other women that I'm you know that um so I told I told Debbie on the way in she and Hillary and the other senators who were elected in this last cycle were sworn in last Wednesday and when Our daughter Chelsea and I were just sitting up there like all the other families in the Senate gallery, being cautioned not to lean over and put our hands on the rail.
I was trying to be on my best behavior.
I didn't whistle, shout, or jump. But it was for me the happiest day of my life since the day my daughter was born. And so I'll always have a special feeling about this election. And I think that Debbie Stabinau showed a great deal of courage and character in this election and she kept on going and when a lot of people thought she couldn't win and she'll do you proud there. I've watched her in Congress and she'll be great.
>> I would like to thank uh so many other members of the Michigan congressional delegation who aren't here.
uh Congressman Levan and Conurs and Bonner who lost his father the last the last couple of days and so and especially my good friend Congressman John Dingle who's recuperating and is still up and around all the other members of the delegation that helped me. I'm very grateful.
I thank Attorney General Jennifer Granholm for being here and uh I thank and uh all the people from the Michigan legislature who are here but especially Representative Kilpatrick who's been such a good friend of mine. Thank you and u Mayor Archer. Uh, thank you, Mayor Hollister. And, uh, thank you.
And I want to say a special word of appreciation to a man who's been one of my closest allies and best friends in political life for way over a decade now. Your former governor and a man who served as a great ambassador to Canada and our administration, Jim Blanchard, and his wife, Janet. Thank you very much.
Now, I'd also like to say that when word got out I was coming here, everybody in my administration wanted to come with me.
I keep telling them, you know, we promised to work till the last day in office.
I've still got some environmental uh initiatives I want to take. I've still got some other things I want to do. And but because I came today to talk about the economy, what happened over the last eight years and where we're going and the relationship of the economy to education, I brought two people who've been with me every day since I became president.
The Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, and the Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman. Give them a big hand, will you?
Thank you.
Believe it or not, there's one person in this audience with whom I served 24 years ago in my first elected position as attorney general of my state, your former attorney general, Frank Kelly.
Thanks for being here for 24 years of friendship. Thank you.
Now, most of all, I want to thank Tom Mizo and the Michigan State Spartans for being up here with me.
I uh usually the national championship team comes to Washington, but I'm sort of a short termer, you know, and nothing beats uh recognizing the team before 14,000 cheering fans.
Also, you know, uh, we have a there's a lot of sense of humor and kidding in my family, and you may know that my daughter is a senior at Stanford. So, I'm going to wear that Spartan jersey tonight when I go home and see if I can provoke some conversation around the dinner table.
Thank you.
One of the things that uh I admire about this team and I followed it very closely last year is that there's no quit in it.
I know you uh I know you had a tough game last weekend, but let me tell you, if you play any game in life long enough, once in a while somebody will sink a three-point shot falling backwards with your hand in their face. It'll happen if you play any game long enough. The equivalent of that will happen to you.
It is not fatal. The only thing that's fatal is quitting. And you got no quit in that team back there. And that's good.
Thank you.
The most important thing I want to do today is to say a simple thank you to the people of Michigan State, Lancing and the state of Michigan for supporting me and Hillary and Al and Tipper Gore these last eight years.
My you know my history with Michigan is profoundly important to the opportunity I have had to serve as president. It began with a primary victory here on St. Patrick's Day in 1992.
It included two general elections in which the people of Michigan were kind enough to give me their electoral votes and thanks for making it three in a row last November.
It uh I first visited this campus in 1992.
I've come here for debates, rallies, and whistle stop tours. I was the first president since Theodore Roosevelt to speak here while in office. I imagine I'm the only one to speak here twice.
Let me tell you, every time I've come here, I've learned something. And even though eight years is longer than it takes most of you to get a degree, my Michigan State education is just about complete.
When uh when I came here, unbelievably almost nine years ago now, our economy was profoundly troubled and our society was divided. In 1992, there were riots in Los Angeles and troubling signs of social division elsewhere.
I talked to college students in my home state of Arkansas who said they were dropping out of school because they couldn't afford to borrow any more money and they didn't believe they could get a good job when they got out and pay their loans back. I met college students in every state in the country, including Michigan, who were afraid they wouldn't get a job even with their diploma.
I met union workers who thought they would either never work again or if they did, they'd never in their lives get a job paying the same amount that they were making before they lost their previous job. Industrial production had actually declined that year for the first time in the history of the United States. Average family income fell by $1600 in just two years. The federal deficit was $290 billion and rising. The national debt had quadrupled over the previous 12 years. Interest rates were high. Growth was low. The confidence of the American people was shaken. And just as bad, it had been 13 years since the Spartans had won a national championship.
It was not the best of times.
And I asked the American people to send me to Washington for a little while on a mission.
A mission to build a 21st century America with opportunity for all, responsibility from all citizens, and a community of all Americans.
I committed to do my best to build a new kind of national government, one that would focus on the future and on providing all of our citizens with the conditions and tools necessary to build their own lives and make the most of America's future.
Well, thanks to the good people of Michigan and people like you across this country, Al Gore and I got the precious chance to spend eight years in Washington putting people first, getting the economy going again, improving social and environmental conditions, advancing peace, freedom, and prosperity around the world, and building a government ready to make the most of this new century. Now I want to talk just a little about what happened because it's important when you look to the future to know what happened in the recent past and how it brought us to this present. We began with a clear strategy to get the economy going. It had three elements. Get the deficit down and get rid of it.
Invest more in our people. Sell more American goods and services around the world.
The American people did the rest. We are still experiencing the longest economic expansion in our history.
Our economy is 50% bigger than it was 8 years ago. When I took office, the national unemployment rate was 7.3% 7.4 here in Michigan. Now it is 4%. It's been below 5% for three years and it's 3.7% in Michigan.
We have that's the lowest overall unemployment rate in 30 years, even though we've got more of our people participating in the workforce. The lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rate ever recorded.
And unlike some of our previous recoveries, this rising tide is lifting all boats.
In the last three years, people at all income levels have done better. And the highest in percentage increase in income has come in the lowest 20% of the working population of America in the last three years.
Povertyy's at a 20-year low. Home ownership at an all-time high. In 1992, Michigan State graduates who found jobs had an average starting salary of just under $26,000.
The average salary for last year's graduate was over $36,000.
Now, how did this happen?
Well, first we said we would get rid of the deficits and begin to attack the debt. And keep in mind, let me just say this again. In the entire history of the country, going back to 1776, the debt of America quadrupled in the 12 years before we began to work. What's happened since? We started with a $290 billion deficit. This year we had a $240 billion surplus. We've had the biggest back-to-back surpluses in history.
By the end of this fiscal year, we will have paid down more than $500 billion in our national debt. We're on track to be debtree by the end of the decade for the first time since 1835.
Now, why why should you care whether your government's out of debt? Here's why.
Two reasons. First, economically, if the government is paying down its debt instead of borrowing money, that means there's more money left for you at lower interest rates for college loans, car loans, home loans. More money for business loans at lower interest rates means more businesses, more jobs, higher pay raises, and a higher stock market.
The average American homeowner in America is now saving $2,000 a year in lower home mortgages because we're paying down the debt instead of running it up. It makes a huge difference to your future which way we're going.
Second reason, very important to Michigan State where you've got a lot of people who depend on student aid, where you compete for research funds from the federal government. We spend over 11 cents on the dollar, nearly 12, and it was headed to 15 when I took office. We spend almost 12 cents on the dollar of every tax dollar you pay to the federal government in interest on the debt. It is the third biggest item in the federal budget behind social security and defense. If we get rid of that 12%, 12% of the federal debt is a huge amount of money. the federal budget. That's 12 cents on the tax dollar. We can either give back to you in tax cuts or invest in our common future in education and healthcare and the environment and national defense in biomed research in building a better future.
So the first thing we said we do is do something about the deficit and we did.
And America should keep going till we're debtree. The second thing we said we'd do is to increase investment in the American people. Now, that's pretty hard when you're cutting spending.
We had to get rid of hundreds of government programs. We reduced the federal workforce by 300,000 to its smallest size since 1960 when Dwight Eisenhower was president. But we have with the passing of this budget more than doubled our investment in education and training in the last eight years and I'm very proud of that. We've had the biggest increase in Head Start in history. We've helped Michigan hire more than 1300 teachers to have smaller classes in the early grades of school.
We'll have 1.6 million children in afterchool programs this year. We'll have 3.3 million children in the children's health insurance program, leading to the first decline in the number of people without health insurance in a dozen years.
We'll have 13 million Americans taking advantage of the college tuition tax credits, the HOPE scholarship and the lifetime learning tax credits, expanded PEL grants and work study programs are helping millions more, including, listen to this, more than 115,000 in Michigan, including some of you in this audience today.
I also want to thank Secretary Riley for something else. The direct student loan program. Michigan State was one of the earliest participants in the direct student loan program. It helps students get college loans more quickly, more cheaply, and gives them more options for paying it back as a percentage of their income. Since 1993, college students have saved $8 billion on their college loans because of the direct loan program. And college and universities has saved five billion.
We said that we believed an administration could be pro business and proworker, and we've tried to do that. In the last eight years, we defeated attempts to repeal prevailing wage laws to bring back company unions to weaken occupational safety standards. We cracked down on sweat shops, protected pension funds, passed tough new worker safety rules against repetitive stress injuries, and raised the minimum wage.
And every time we did that, somebody said, "This is really bad for business."
Every year for the last eight years, the United States has set a record for new small business formations. And we have more jobs in this 8-year period than ever before in history.
We said we believed that the modern economy must be pro- work and pro- family.
And that's something a lot of the students here probably haven't thought of very much. But I can tell you one of the things that I hear all the time and I used to hear it even more from people at all income levels, including quite high income levels, is that they are desperately afraid that they cannot meet their responsibilities at work and their responsibilities at home. I hardly know anybody with young kids who doesn't have at least one or two searing examples every year where they're worried about they've even that whether they've neglected their work or neglected their kids. Now bringing up children is the most important work of any society in any time by far. And if we if we have to make a choice between work and family, our economic objectives are defeated before we start. I can I can tell you I've reached the age now where I can tell you from personal experience knowing hundreds of people my age. If your kids if life doesn't work out for them, it doesn't make a rip how much money you have. It doesn't matter how well you've done in business. nothing else matters.
And so this is very very important. What do we do about that's why we gave a tax cut even when we were reducing the deficit to 15 million working families at the lowest levels of income so anybody that worked 40 hours a week could use a tax system to get out of poverty, not be driven into it. That's why we raised the minimum wage. That's why we passed the family and medical leave law, which 25 million Americans have been able to use to take some time off when there was a sick child or a sick parent or a baby was born without losing their job. It's been good for the American economy.
Now, we said we would cut crime and we did.
We put over 100,000 police on the street working toward 150,000.
We banned assault weapons. The Brady Law, background checks have kept 600,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting guns.
Crime is at a 25-year low. Violent crime in Michigan down 21%.
And I know it was controversial here in Michigan, but I want to say again, I'm on the way out, and I'm not running for anything.
But let me tell you something.
I have in my closet an honorary jacket with a lifetime membership from the NRA which I got from working with them, listen to this, when I was governor of Arkansas on hunter education programs and trying to resolve disputes between retired people who retired in unincorporated areas and hunters. I did a lot of work with them. But I think this business of trying to convince the voters of any state in our nation that somebody who wants to keep guns away from criminals and kids is threatening the right to hunt or the right to engage in sports shooting. It's just not so.
Nobody. It's not so.
And I'm telling you something, it's not so.
Now, you can't You cannot there is not a single law-abiding hunter in the state of Michigan who missed a day in the woods because of these initiatives we've taken, nor a single sports shooter that missed a single contest. But there's a lot of people alive today because those 600,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers could not get their handgun.
We believed and it was somewhat controversial even in Michigan when I said this that we could we not only could but we had to grow the economy and improve the environment.
We believe we could break the iron link between putting more greenhouse gases into the air and increasing the world's temperature and growing the economy.
We believe that new sources of energy and new means of energy uh conservation could provide a whole new future not just for the United States but for the rest of the world. Now what have we done? The air is cleaner. The water is cleaner. We cleaned up 42 toxic waste dumps in Michigan alone. Five times as many as the two previous administrations of new high-tech jobs. Just last Friday, Ford unveiled an SUV that gets the equivalent of 40 m per gallon of gas.
And at the Detroit Auto Show right now, right now, GM is showing a family sedan that uses electric hybrid technology.
That is electricity plus fuel.
to get the equivalent of 80 miles a gallon.
We we these kind of vehicles will be rolling off the assembly line soon. I am proud we've supported their development through the partnership for the next generation vehicles that we established with the UAW and the automakers back in 93 that the vice president oversaw for us for eight years. But it's going to get better. We are also funding research at the department of agriculture into bofuels which most of you know is ethanol but you can make fuel out of anything. You can make them out of grasses, out of rice holes, out of any kind of waste product from farms. The real problem with it is today it takes seven gallons of gasoline to make eight gallons of bofuel. But we are doing research to try to crack the chemical mystery that is the equivalent of how we made gasoline from unrefined petroleum from oil. And when we do, and they're getting very close, you will be able to make eight gallons of bofuel with one gallon of gasoline, which means everybody will be able to get the equivalent of 500 miles to the gallon of gasoline. And this environmental issue will be much less formidable than it is today. and we will guarantee the future of the auto industry in Michigan by doing what is right for the environment, not pretending there's no challenge. That's what we've got to do.
Now, let me say to all of you, I love all these statistics. It's nice to have a good story to tell.
But this is about more than the statistics. It's about more than money.
I think there is a new feeling in America of possibility. That we are prepared for the 21st century. That we can meet the big challenges that are still out there. That we can seize the opportunities that are still out there.
And I hope one reason is that we understand that we need each other more and we have to work together more. One of the things that really bothered me when I ran for president in 1992 is how much politics had become a matter of subtraction and division rather than addition and multiplication.
What do I mean by that? Politicians always assumed that they needed wedge issues to divide people and then they wanted their supporters to be more inflamed and mad matter than the other people's supporters and then they hoped that the others people's supporters if you could attack your opponent enough would get disillusioned and wouldn't show up for votes. So they were trying to divide and subtract. I always thought life worked better when you were trying to add and multiply and I still believe that. I believe that one of the fundamental facts of the modern world is that we are growing more and more interdependent within our communities, our nation, and beyond our borders.
And I believe that therefore successful social work, including economics, is becoming more and more like winning a national basketball championship. It's a team sport. I don't care how good a star you are. If the other four walk off the court, you're whipped.
I don't care how good you are. Five on one, the five win.
Now, we have to think about this more. I am immensely gratified that this generation of young people, I think, understands that better than they've gotten credit for. I've never understood all this sort of generation X talk and how young people are selfish and self-seeking. At Michigan State alone, 150 students have participated in Americanore since we've had that program out of 150,000 nationwide.
We've had more young people do community service in Americaore and earn some money to go on to college in six years than we had in the first 30 years of the Peace Corps. The young people of this country understand that they have to build a common future together. They understand that we have to find what's common about us across all the racial and religious and other lines that divide us. And that's the last thought I want to leave with you. I've just given you a speech mostly about economics today and about the related progress we've made in other areas. But if somebody said to me, "You got to just leave America with one wish."
Believe it or not, more than wanting us to be continually successful economically, I would say we have to be one America. We have to reach out across all these lines that divide us. We have to celebrate our differences.
And I hope you will do that.
Now, one thing I will not claim is to have solved all the problems. You got big problems out there or challenges. You got to deal with the aging of America.
When the baby boomers like me retire, there's going to be a bunch of us.
And you can't have Social Security and Medicare and the cost of our retirement bankrupt our children's ability to raise our grandchildren. We didn't finish that work, but we made it easier by putting 25 years on Medicare and putting uh we're up to 54 years with Social Security now. We did a good job. If we save the money that we're piling up on social security, we can save 54 years on social security.
So, we didn't solve global warming, but we made a good dent in it. We haven't solved all the economic problems of the inner cities, the Indian reservations, the rural communities that have been left behind, but we left America with the tools to do it. And what I want to ask all of you to do is to think about where we are now and where we were eight years ago.
And then imagine in your own mind, do what I did eight years ago, especially the young people. Imagine where you would like America to be 10 years from now. Where would you like Michigan to be 10 years from now? What do you think it would take to get you there?
I can tell you that no matter what strategy you adopt, you will have to continue to invest in people, to put education first, to care about balancing work and family, to care about balancing business and labor, to care about balancing the economy and the environment. And if we think about the future with those sorts of basic values and never forgetting our mutual need for one another and that America wins when we treat every single endeavor like a team sport, the best days of this country are still ahead. Thank you and God bless you.
There's no space to live in this town. You're out of line and the reason that you had to care. The traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere.
You thought you found a friend to take you out of the Heat.
Heat.
Yeah.
Heat.
Heat.
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